


Rescued

by ladygray99



Series: Rescue Me [2]
Category: Numb3rs
Genre: Community: numb3rs100, Cross-Posted on Tumblr, Drabble, Drabble Sequence, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-06
Updated: 2011-03-06
Packaged: 2017-10-16 03:43:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/168052
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladygray99/pseuds/ladygray99
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What next, now that Don's been rescued?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Star Pupil (#297 Star)

Don didn’t have the prerequisites or the confidence to apply for CalSci. Not when every day was still a small battle against himself. He enrolled at Pasadena City College. His schedule included remedial math, introductory physics and elementary astronomy.

His astronomy professor was a frumpy woman who spoke with her hands, pontificating on the glories of the heavens to students just looking to fill a science credit.

Don was soon her star pupil.

His math wasn’t much stronger than his knee but after every class he went home where Larry would hold his hand through his first steps into cosmos.


	2. Home (#298 Moon)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Don needs a new home.

Even with his pension and disability Don can't afford his apartment and tuition. He doesn't really want it anyway. The apartment doesn’t feel like him anymore.

Larry finds a small wreck of a home on a scrubby bit of land close to the monastery. A tarp is keeping out the weather.

Larry buys it.

Don moves in.

Everyone is horrified, but it's summer and shouldn't rain for months.

The first night he and Larry pull off the tarp so they can look at the stars but late that night Don wakes to find a bold bright moon bathing them in light.


	3. Worlds of Dreams (#299 World)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Don still dreams of his old life.

Don sometimes wakes shaking with dreams of his old life. They are surreal and detached as if they were dreams that belong to some other man.

In his dreams the world is full of death and guns and weeping victims reaching out to him, demanding answers and justice that he could never properly give them.

Now his world is filled moons and suns and giant nebulas. Don likes them. They do not hate or love or have any motive or demands. They simply exist, nothing more or less than what they are just as Don wishes he could sometimes be.


	4. Discovering the Orbit of Margaret (#300 Orbit)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They let Don look at the pictures.

Don knows the math will never be easy but his professors like him and so do the other students so they give him the pictures to look at and don't comment when he treats them like galactic crime scene photos.

Still, burying his nose in picture after picture is how Don sees the dot. Hardly bigger than a pin prick it's in some photos and not in others and in strange places in yet others.

They need the Hubble to verify but it's a small bright world with an erratic orbit whipping around a white dwarf. Don names it Margaret.


	5. Contented Silence (#301 Atmosphere)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Don and Larry watch the Leonids.

The dust of the Tempel-Tuttle comet falls through the atmosphere lighting the sky, even in LA.

Don knows he should be working on his thesis but it’s warm and after midnight so he lays out on the grass to watch the Leonids.

Larry lies by his side and takes his hand. He says nothing. Nothing has to be said.

Don has learned that silence, when shared, can be a gift; that communication needs fewer words than he ever believed.

A particularly bright streak blazes overhead and he feels Larry shift closer.

Don smiles and for a moment feels truly content.


End file.
